Comment by pierat | Hacker News Reader

Comment by pierat | Hacker News Reader

Marx explained this quite well in his capitalist critiques (note: these are different than the communist manifesto). In analyzing Capitalism, Marx found that there's 4 primary types of alienation happening to the worker in a capitalist enterprise. This was expanded from Hegel's 3 types of alienation.

Alienation 1: From a worker's product.

Alienation 2: From the act of production

Alienation 3: From a worker's human nature

Alienation 4: From other workers

Wikipedia has a great intro writeup here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marx%27s_theory_of_alienation

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But, what is a "bullshit job"? It's a job where you cannot see what you do, cannot see its impact on the whole of production, cannot see how others fit in with what you do, and siloed so that you do work in exclusivity of others.

But there it is. Marx wrote about these problems, and there were starting to be these problems. Now, we have computation as its own force that serves to radically separate us from each other's contributions, so that *only* the management and owner class can see how things all go together.

And as to Alienation 4, we see this explicitly with "gig workers", being pitted against each other. There's only so much work, and gig companies figured out they could make workers compete with each other to who will accept the least money for a parcel of work, all the while giving up essential social obligations workers fought in blood to get (workers compensation, unemployment insurance, etc).

People believe they're in bullshit jobs because they have been removed as far as possible from what they and their colleagues do, as a control point by the ownership and managerial class.

In reality, almost all jobs are not bullshit.

Wait, so most workers are alienated, and alienation makes a job bullshit. But most jobs are not bullshit?

> A child free from the guilt of ownership and the burden of economic competition will grow up with the will to do what needs doing and the capacity for joy in doing it. It is useless work that darkens the heart. The delight of the nursing mother, of the scholar, of the successful hunter, of the good cook, of the skilful maker, of anyone doing needed work and doing it well, - this durable joy is perhaps the deepest source of human affection and of sociality as a whole.

- Ursula Le Guin

That's a good quote.

No. Most workers are alienated for the 4 aforementioned reasons.

The alienation *makes you think* the job is bullshit, because you are kept from the whole view of what you do and how you work within the organization. The whole view (read: the non-alienating view) is from the managerial and ownership positions.

The reason management class wants to further alienation of the workers is so that the workers can be exploited by management class, and the workers won't know any better.

This is just citing the theory, right? In reality there is complexity and there are humans.

You say "just citing the theory", as if theory is some dirty concept.

Marx's critique of capitalism, and how it breaks is well established economic theory. And it explains the labor market extremely well, even with employment-but-not-really "gig economy" perfectly. And, it also explains why people feel that they have bullshit jobs... if you're aware of the 4 types of capitalist worker alienation.

With capitalist alienation enables the exploitation since the alienation makes you think your work doesnt matter. And with information asymmetry that occurs in the 4 alienations, the worker is unequipped to understand their true value. So, exploitation occurs naturally from that.

> You say "just citing the theory", as if theory is some dirty concept.

No I don't. This basic level of comprehension shouldn't be out of reach. I'm saying you can cite a theory, but that doesn't mean it's true, and certainly doesn't account for reality. E.g. managers are not some hive mind who act in concert. They're individuals with their own motivations and personalities. Assuming that they withold information from their employees (notwithstanding managers are also employees, but this again would be too close to reality for this theory) rather than they just also don't know the information, or the information is speculative, and blaming a worker's lack of knowledge of that information on them is to infantilise employees. Employees are not like children, thinking parents have all the answers and all the money, and just refuse to promise or buy things out of spite. They are grown ups who have chosen a certain path, and who, if they ever choose to become managers, will realise that they knew quite a lot already.

> And, it also explains why people feel that they have bullshit jobs... if you're aware of the 4 types of capitalist worker alienation.

Scientology explains societal problems through literal aliens. That doesn't mean the explanation is good or useful.

As a small cog in a large corporate machine, I get this. You just keep spinning and spinning, seemingly doing the same kinds of projects and the same work over and over again, often with no understanding of where the projects are coming from or whether or not the hard work you're putting in has any real value. And then there's constant changing and revisions and sometimes the project gets dropped, which is a clear indication that your hard work was basically wasted by higher ups who seem to have no understanding of the work that has to go into the projects.

I get paid though, so I'll keep spinning and find my value as a human outside of work.

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